Historicalmaterialism

According to Marx’s materialist theory, history is a series ofclass struggles and revolutionary upheavals, leading ultimately to freedom for all. Marx derived his views in part from the philosophy ofG.W.F. Hegel, who conceived of history as the dialectical self-development of “spirit.” In contrast to Hegel’s philosophicalidealism, however, Marx held that history is driven by the material or economic conditions that prevail in a given age. “Before men can do anything else,” Marx wrote, “they must first produce the means of their subsistence.” Without material production there would be no life and thus no human activity.

According to Marx, material production requires two things: “material forces of production”—roughly, raw materials and the tools required toextract and process them—and “social relations of production”—thedivision of labour through which raw materials are extracted and processed. Human history is the story of both elements’ changing and becoming ever more complex. In primitive societies the material forces were few and simple—for example, grains and the stone tools used to grind them into flour. With the growth of knowledge andtechnology came successive upheavals, or “revolutions,” in the forces and relations of production and in the complexity of both. For example, iron miners once worked with pickaxes and shovels, which they owned, but the invention of the steam shovel changed the way they extracted iron ore. Since no miner could afford to buy a steam shovel, he had towork for someone who could. Industrialcapitalism, in Marx’s view, is aneconomic system in which oneclass—the rulingbourgeoisie—owns the means of production while the working class orproletariat effectively loses its independence, the worker becoming part of the means of production, a mere “appendage of the machine.”

Critique of capitalism

The second aspect of Marx’s theory is his critique ofcapitalism. Marx held that human history had progressed through a series of stages, from ancient slave society throughfeudalism to capitalism. In each stage a dominant class uses its control of the means of production to exploit the labour of a larger class of workers. But internal tensions or “contradictions” in each stage eventually lead to the overthrow and replacement of the ruling class by its successor. Thus, thebourgeoisie overthrew thearistocracy and replaced feudalism with capitalism; so too, Marx predicted, will the proletariat overthrow the bourgeoisie and replace capitalism with communism.

Marx acknowledged that capitalism was a historically necessary stage of development that had brought about remarkable scientific and technological changes—changes that greatly increasedaggregate wealth by extending humankind’s power over nature. The problem, Marx believed, was that this wealth—and the political power and economic opportunities that went with it—was unfairly distributed. The capitalists reap the profits while paying the workers a pittance for long hours of hard labour. Yet it is the workers who create economic value, according to Marx’slabour theory of value, which holds that the worth of a commodity is determined by the amount of labour required to produce it. Under capitalism, Marx claimed, workers are not paid fully or fairly for their labour because the capitalists siphon offsurplus value, which they callprofit. Thus, thebourgeois owners of the means of production amass enormous wealth, while the proletariat falls further into poverty. This wealth also enables the bourgeoisie to control the government or state, which does the bidding of the wealthy and the powerful to the detriment of the poor and the powerless.

The exploitation of oneclass by another remains hidden, however, by a set of ideas that Marx calledideology. “The ruling ideas of every epoch,” he wrote inThe German Ideology, “are the ideas of the ruling class.” By this Marx meant that the conventional or mainstream ideas taught in classrooms, preached from pulpits, and communicated through themass media are ideas that serve the interests of the dominant class. In slave societies, for example,slavery was depicted as normal, natural, and just. In capitalist societies thefree market is portrayed as operating efficiently, fairly, and for the benefit of all, while alternative economic arrangements such associalism are derided or dismissed as false or fanciful. These ideas serve to justify or legitimize the unequal distribution of economic and political power. Even exploited workers may fail to understand their true interests and accept the dominant ideology—a condition that later Marxists called “false consciousness.” One particularlypernicious source of ideological obfuscation isreligion, which Marx called “the opium of the people” because it purportedly dulls the critical faculties and leads workers to accept their wretched condition as part of God’s plan.

Besides inequality, poverty, and falseconsciousness, capitalism also produces “alienation.” By this Marx meant that workers are separated or estranged from (1) the product of their labour, which they do not own, (2) the process of production, which under factory conditions makes them “an appendage of the machine,” (3) the sense of satisfaction that they would derive from using their human capacities in unique and creative ways, and (4) other human beings, whom they see as rivals competing for jobs and wages.

Revolution and communism

Marx believed that capitalism is a volatile economic system that will suffer a series of ever-worsening crises—recessions anddepressions—that will produce greaterunemployment, lower wages, and increasing misery among the industrial proletariat. These crises will convince the proletariat that its interests as a class are implacably opposed to those of the ruling bourgeoisie. Armed with revolutionaryclass consciousness, the proletariat will seize the major means of production along with the institutions of state power—police,courts,prisons, and so on—and establish a socialist state that Marx called “the revolutionarydictatorship of the proletariat.” The proletariat will thus rule in its own class interest, as the bourgeoisie did before, in order to prevent a counterrevolution by the displaced bourgeoisie. Once this threat disappears, however, the need for the state will also disappear. Thus, theinterim state will wither away and be replaced by a classless communist society.

Marx’s vision of communist society is remarkably (and perhaps intentionally) vague. Unlike earlier “utopian socialists,” whom Marx and Engels derided as unscientific and impractical—includingHenri de Saint-Simon,Charles Fourier, andRobert Owen—Marx did not produce detailed blueprints for a future society. Some features that he did describe, such as public education and a graduatedincome tax, are now commonplace. Other features, such aspublic ownership of the major means of production and distribution of goods and services according to the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” remain as radical as they were in Marx’s time. But for the most part, Marx believed that the institutions of a future communist society should be designed and decided democratically by the people living in it; it was not his task, he said, to “write recipes for the kitchens of the future.”Yet, though Marx was reluctant to write such recipes, many of his followers were not. Among them was his friend and coauthor, Friedrich Engels.